Reader Discussion: Are You Willing To Look Past Bad Review Scores?

This week's big release, Aliens: Colonial Marines, is doing terrible almost across the board when it comes to review scores. In response, I've seen plenty of gamers on Twitter mention that they've cancelled their pre-orders or that they're returning their copies before they even open them. What about you? Does any particular score or an assortment of scores affect your purchasing decisions?

Although a demo is never a finished version of a gamer i usually go by that. So no i play the game first before i make a judgment call....needless to say all i had to do was play the RE6 demo and never play again.

I've never returned an unopened game just cause it may have gotten lower scores than I had hoped. I have completely avoided some games though because they get slammed in reviews.

For instance CoD always gets a 9+ though it hardly ever changes. That doesn't mean I go like a headless chicken and buy it. A counter example is MoH: WF, I was a little curious to see how the game would be scored after having played the demo and not being too impressed and it did get less than favorable scores. Even now it's maybe $30 at the store and I won't buy it cause the reviews weren't the greatest.

I think for me (and many people) it depends on the score, the frequency of the score, and what kind of game it is. For instance if a game gets 2's and 4's from many reviews I'm not likely to try it out no matter what, however if it is 8 and above I will likely want to get it and even 6's and 7's if the game intrigues me.

What happens to me is that even if I'm playing a game that got a six or a seven and enjoying it, I still have this horrible almost itching feeling in the back of my mind that it only got a six or a seven. I must say though, if it's Star Wars, I couldn't care less what the score was, I reserve the right to judge Star Wars as harshly or as kindly as I want.

I definitely keep up with review scores and whatnot about the games I plan on purchasing. I like to be well-informed so I can make smart decisions when spending my hard-earned cash but I believe games that do get low critical praise can still be enjoyed by the right audience. Many times fans of a particular franchise can look past such things just because they want more from a beloved universe.

Bad games can also be "so bad, they're good". Just look at some of the Super Replays for example. Games like Blue Stinger are by no means good games by today's standards, but the GI crew has had a fantastic time going through them, and viewers (myself included) really enjoy the journey. All in all, games bring people together, even bad games.

Sometimes, if you haven't had a taste of something better, you can think they're great games, not realizing there's something much better out there. Since I had never played Battlefield, I was totally amazed by Homefront's multiplayer, and I still haven't played Battlefield, though now I play PlanetSide 2,and no multiplayer out there can match THAT.

Depends on what the complaints are. I've sometimes enjoyed a game despite poor reviews. I do still pay attention to reviews though since there's a difference between a game being panned because of a few flaws I can easily get over like a weak story or short gameplay (I liked Operation Raccoon City even though I agreed with all the complaints about how they handled the source material) and a game being panned because it's completely broken (like MindJack, which from the reviews doesn't even sound playable).